After talking to the other players, Italy seemed like the most reasonable ally – Russia was too absent, Turkey seemed too untrustworthy, and the other powers are too far removed on the board.

Italy then tempted me with the offer of a bold alliance where I would let him move through my territory (Venice->Trieste->Serbia->Bulgaria), thus confusing the other players and placing us in a really strong position towards Turkey and Russia. I knew this was really dangerous, but I decided I’d rather be bold and either die soon or win than playing a mediocre game.

So far, so good, but Italy has been very quiet recently, so I wonder whether he’s about to stab me in the back. The next moves are due tomorrow, and I’ll know then whether he was really on Turkey’s side or mine.

On the map, I’ve marked the past moves in black, the moves that I’m hoping for in green, and the ones I fear in red.

Given that I’ll be on paternity leave for the next fortnight, I thought I’d join a game of Diplomacy, something which I haven’t had time to do for a while.

It’s a game of standard gunboat (= anonymous) Diplomacy, so I won’t reveal the name of the game here, but a map can be found here.

I’m Austria, and so far Italy and Turkey have been very friendly, Germany OK, and Russia hasn’t uttered a single word yet. I would prefer an AIT (Austria-Italy-Turkey) alliance, becoming either AT or AI later, but we’ll see. As England very truthfully put it, “no rumor is worth anything until the
first set of moves are completed”. Basically, everybody will pretend to be my friend until the first moves (due around the weekend), but their actions will reveal who’s been lying and who hasn’t.

Yesterday, I introduced Marcel and Charlotte to the boardgame Broker (das Börsenspiel in German).

Normally, Charlotte tends to learn fast, but she didn’t really grasp the concept of buying cheap and selling dear. Marcel, on the other hand, very definitely got the idea, and he won the game with nearly £100k.

Charlotte made one sweet contribution, though: One of the companies traded in the game is Deutsche Bank, but she turned that into Dodgy Bank!